12 Answers
12

I start most of my mockups at 1200px wide even though I'm designing for 1024px resolution. I set up guides within the mockup for 1000px. The height may vary. The reason I make my mockup file wider is to see how the design feels with breathing room around it. Most people use higher than 1024px these days.

Only answer to provide a good reason for making the mockup wider than the target resolution's width.
–
e100Jan 17 '11 at 19:39

2

I would call this answer "a very good idea", but not a "standard".
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MosheJan 26 '11 at 14:34

You should use "em" instead of "px". For example, instead of 1000px, use 62.5em. This will look the same on a "normal" pc, but will adapt more elegantly on not-so-normal screens (ie. HiDPI, mobiles).
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HugoJun 12 '13 at 2:07

Long answer:
You cannot ever be sure that your presentation it will look right on your client computer (it could have a different operative system, browsers, a different calibrated monitor, or a lower resolution with big font setted to read better). For this reason I tend to show always presentation on my computer if I can.

If I cannot show it on my pc on the size matter I use those my personal rules (Don't take my measurements as holy ones, everyone has his owns):

As safe size it is good optimise for 800x600 (removing scrollbard and topbar I use 775x400 as "above the line"). But nowdays with more cheaper screen with wider standard I started to design for 1024x768 (1000x500)

The important it is to optimise not for the height but for the width. Height it is solvable with a simple scroll of a mouse, with the width if you don't have a mac mouse you cannot scroll horizontally to view more information. It is good to know however where more or less could be positioned the bottom line of the screen, even if it is impossible to determine precisely .

NOTE: I use such low height even on 1000px because people tend to have a lot of additional scrollbars on the basic browser (like GoogleRank for example or bookmarks, and many many others), so I always like to design for worst situation is possible.

Currently the vast majority of users have resolutions of 1024x600 (tablet/netbook) or bigger. You have to remember to remove about 24px for the scroll bars, which leaves a nice even 1000px width. As for height: web users are very good at scrolling vertically, as they've grown accustomed to scroll wheels on mice. The initial height is important mostly for first-impressions.

Users are not quite as good at scrolling horizontally, so making layouts wider than 1000px is not recommended.

Also many users with larger screens do not use their entire screen for their web browser. Especially now that Windows 7 includes simple drag-n-dock functionality to drop a window on half the screen.

I'd have to look for stats to back me up (such as this SO blog post), but 1024x768 has taken or is taking over as the standard common denominator for screen resolution. I design web mockups for general audiences with a width of 1000 px to account for scrollbars and window borders with a resolution with a width of 1024 px. For more specific audiences, Pekka's right in his comment. Find out what the norm is for the target audience.

Browser size today is a tricky question because people are using two types of devices, computers with higher and higher resolutions and phones with relatively low resolutions.

If you're making a site to be a site than most computers today (most being 90% or more) have a minimum resolution of 1024. If you want slightly fewer computers but still a good percentage than 1200 is also in that range.

If you're making a mobile site, most phones max out at 480px for horizontal browsing, but most of them also have some sort of rendering system for larger sites.

The question for size is all about your own audience, if your target is a bunch of designers, you can have a larger site, if it's middle aged folks looking for new car insurance than you should work a little smaller, and if it's for phone users to look at while on their phones, even smaller still.

It totally depends on your website, as a rule, I'd tend not to go over 1000 for those clients on old machines. However studies are now showing that designing for 1200 is now acceptable in the design world, so it's food for thought definitely.

Your plan should be to hit the lowest common denominator and if that happens to be Joe Dinosaur on an 800x600 Windows 95 machine then that's who you should cater for.

Also it totally depends on the design of your website. I'm currently designing a website for my agency and it's going to be 800 wide, that is for preference, not to cater to anyone specific.

Unfortunately there isn't any standard size as the webpages now are accessed in a number of displays. Though to be on safer side, please research on the most popular resolutions (For example, 1024x768) and design on the basis of the popularity.

Depends on how you define 'standard' I suppose, but I heartily disagree with your answer. The existence of '960' grid systems and specific breakpoints in Bootstrap suggest that you can make generalizations (that, admittedly, will change over time).
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BrendanOct 7 '13 at 18:16

@Brendan commonly used, perhaps. But the point is that there is no standard size to a web page. In fact, Bootstrap is the epitome of that (responsive).
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DA01Oct 7 '13 at 19:48

Could you expand on your answer in any way? Perhaps by referring to a resource with statistics or something with substance. As it stands your answer is very basic and almost just an opinion.
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DomOct 7 '13 at 20:02